Articles Posted in Brain Injury

As a parent of young children, Miami Personal Injury Attorney Joseph Lipsky knows too well that for too many children, play time on school and park playgrounds don’t always end with smiling faces. Unfortunately, personal injuries, mainly head injuries, from playground falls are rapidly increasing across the United States.

While many schools and parks have taken necessary steps to reduce so-called accidental traumatic head injuries, over the past decade, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the number of children under the age of 14 who have been seen at hospital ERs due to acute head injuries has risen to over twenty thousand annually. Generally parents focus on the number of head injuries associated with sports, such as football, but head injuries, including concussions, caused by falls on playgrounds are a growing epidemic which needs to be better addressed. The number of head injury visits to emergency rooms rose by almost fifty percent over the past 3 years. Boys made up nearly sixty percent of those emergency room visits. Nearly one half of the children seen at ERs were between five and nine years old.

Although some of the increase in head injury emergency room care may be attributed to parents becoming more aware of the dangers presented by head trauma, given the increased publicity about professional football plays; there can be no doubt that falls from monkey bars and swings play an increasing role in playground concussions. Not surprisingly, almost sixty percent of all children and adolescent head injuries happen on school playgrounds. Parents need to remain vigilant of the symptoms of brain injury children may display after suffering head trauma.